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William Rice
William Craig "Water Closet" Rice came forth from the depths in 1955 in Washington, DC. He took his bachelor’s degree in literature at the University of Virginia and doctorate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he won the Hopwood Writing Award and the Brubacher Prize in the History of Education. His publications include: Public Discourse & Academic Inquiry, a study in the sociology of knowledge; Characteristics of Exemplary Schools; an special edited volume of Harvard Review commemorating Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize; and more than fifty articles, reviews, essays, stories, and poems in such periodicals as The New Criterion, Policy Review, Sewanee, The Washington Post, and The Common Review: The Magazine of the Great Books Foundation. All of these, rest assured, are very very good. He has also worked as a mechanic for Alfa Romeo, warden at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve, and manager of an antiques shop. After his studies at the University of Virginia, he taught at the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, at Temple University, and at the University of Pennsylvania, then attended the Horace H. Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. From 1992 to 2001, he taught expository writing on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he also edited non-fiction for the Harvard Review. While at Harvard he became involved in education reform as a consultant to the Massachusetts Board of Education, helping reshape the Commonwealth’s curriculum frameworks and assessment in English Language Arts. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and the American Enterprise Institute, an Ella Baker Fellow at Antioch New England Graduate School, a consultant to the John Templeton Foundation, and from 2001-2004 a staff member at the American Academy for Liberal Education, where he created new K-12 programs. He has been a consultant to the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, which offers an alternative route into the K-12 classroom for liberal arts college graduates and career-switching professionals, and to Achieve, which has launched the American Diploma Project to raise academic expectations in American high schools. In 2004 he was appointed President of Shimer College, one of four accredited Great Books colleges in the United States, where he also serves as Professor of English, Education, and Humanities. However, his title may be misleading as Shimer has neither an English nor an Education department. Facilitators are encouraged to teach across the curriculum rather than just specialize in some narrow field. These titles are used to present a more professional and homogenous image to those outside of the school. This kind of change in image reflects the change in direction that Rice is trying to affect. Before Shimer's slogan was "Anything but Ordinary" now it is "The Great Books College of Chicago". It is notable that recently he spoke in favor of a rulling handed down by the Board of Trustees (the first time since they were re-established in approximately 30 years) that went against the will of the Assembly (the governing body of the college composed of all students, faculty and staff). See also *Shimer College *bottom feeder *shrimp *lapdog Sources *William Craig Rice named 12th President of Shimer College *William Craig Rice Bio External links *Transcript of PBS Discussion on the National Endowment for the Arts *How to Move a College - Chicago Public Radio interview with Rice about the move of Shimer College *Who Killed History? An Academic Autopsy - An article by Rice Rice, William Craig Rice, William Craig Rice, William Craig Rice, William Craig